Welcome to our little town...

A look at this week:

With Purim right around the corner, we started our three week study about the holiday. This week we focused on the town, Shushan, and the characters: Ester, Vashti, Mordecia, Haman and King Achashveirosh.

And how did we do this? We started the week by talking about the story of Purim. This led us to a discussion about the town of Shushan. Then we talked about buildings that we may find in a town. We decided to take boxes and decorate them to make them look like different buildings in a town. The children chose to make the palace where King Achashveriosh lived. They also wanted to make an additional house where Queen Vashti may have lived. The other buildings in our town included a grocery store and a hospital (where, as Avery stated, "is where sick people are." And of course we wanted to make sure that the sick people were also taken care of!).

After we made our town we decided to also make some jewelry that Queen Ester would have liked. So we used painted pasta and made patterns. First as a class we played a game of letter memory and each time someone found a match they were able to add a piece to our pattern. Then they were able to make their own necklaces. How nice it was to see that the next day Lizzy chose to wear her necklace back to school since she was so proud of it!

On Wednesday we continued to study patterns by making Persian carpets. We wondered if these carpets may have been similar to items that could have been found in the palace in Shushan. We talked about how when we weave the paper, we develop an AB pattern (a two color pattern that repeats itself).

As for other activities that the children enjoyed participating in, there were many others. In writing, the children were able to fill in the blank to: Purim, Purim, What do you see? I see _______ looking at me. It was nice to hear the different ideas they came up with that had to do with Purim. Some answers included "a costume, Queen Ester, Queen Vashti, a grogger, King Achashveriosh and Haman." In the block area the children tried to build their own town. Some children chose to work with the felt board box and use the felt Purim characters to try to act out the story of Purim. Other children chose to go gem digging (a math and science exercise) where they used flashlights and popsicle sticks to dig in the corn kernels to find "gems" and then had to count to see if they found all 15 before returning them back to the kernel pit.

Listening in:

It is always interesting to listen in to the children during play times. Many times the children choose to play different role playing games. We have been talking, lately, about their choices and making sure they are not scaring each other by growling or chasing them too much. However, the day that I just stayed back and listened the children chose to play pirates. Here is a little bit of what they were saying.

Miriam: Do you want to play Jewish pirates with us?

Lizzy: We are playing pirates. I have a telescope.

Josh: We're pirates

Lizzy: Jayden, we're playing pirates. Right?

Jayden: Yes.

Lizzy: Then let's get on our pirate ship!

Looking at next week:

Next week is a short week since we do not have school on Monday due to the observance of President's Day. However, starting on Tuesday we are going to start making noise as we continue to discuss Purim. With the grogger as the premise for our discussion, we are going to be making music. The children will be making some musical instruments and exploring others.

Puppet play



Pattern making, paper weaving

Gem digging

Town building

Showing off his pattern necklace

lacing pasta patterns

Memory to make patterns

Painting boxes to make our town

And for an added treat, last week during our music class (which is part of our Shabbat party) the children made a thunderstorm in the rainforest.

Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah...

that is what we give; to the poor people, to help them live.

A look at this week:

We have been very busy with our money this week. Some children took time to make their own silver coins (out of aluminum foil) in our art center by tracing cups and cutting out the circles. Others really enjoyed going to home living to fill the tzedakah box and then pretend to give it to people in need. Of course when you think about money, math comes into mind. We did talk about how much the different coins were worth and we read stories about money. But we also sorted coins, filled metal tzedakah boxes and then listened to them shake to see if we could figure out which one had more money in it. The children also wrote a book page about money and made their own tzedakah boxes out of recycle materials. And at the end of many of the days we had the chance to do tzedakah races. I think jumping was one of the favorite ways to get from one end of the room to the other to put their plastic pennies into the tzedakah boxes before coming back to the line.

Listening in to the conversations:

This week it was fun to listen to the children talk about money. They all really enjoyed the opportunity to play with money and learn a little more about it. On Monday I showed the children that if they used a magnifying glass, they could look at the back of a penny and see the statue of Abraham Lincoln. Throughout the rest of the week they were excited to tell me that they were able to find "the man" on the back of the penny!

We have kept our grass heads here to watch them grow a little more. It has been fun to heard all the excitement when they get to go over and see their grass growing!

A look at next week:

The next holiday that we will be talking about is Purim (a celebration of the Jewish salvation from the Persian Empire). We will be spending three weeks talking about things that surround Purim. Next week while having a little discussion about the story of Purim we are actually going to focus more on the community. We will work with Purim characters on a felt board but we are also going to make a small town out of boxes and use our characters in the town as well!

A Planting Update:

We have a few items growing in our classroom...items we want growing! First our cat grass is doing very well. i do think there is one cup that hasn't shown as much growth as the others, but all the others have at least 2 stalks of cat grass growing.

Next, we took grapes and put them in to cups in the window sill to see if we can make raisins. As much as we are not sure if this experiment will really work, we noticed that many of the grapes are starting to wrinkle!

And the finally growing project included taking corn seeds, cantaloupe seeds, cucumber seeds and garden bean seeds and planting them into egg cartons. We have started growth on the corn seeds and the garden bean seeds! It was very exciting to make that discovery today!

Jumping during the tzedakah races

Writing the names of coins

Which tzedakah box has more coins?

Sorting coins

Walking tzedakah race

Filling a tzedakah box in Home Living

We are "growing" at the Gan

A Look at this Week:

We started the week with a nature walk outside. With the beautiful weather we had this week, how could we not? We went outside with our magnifying glasses to see what we could look at. And the children were all excited to come back in and share with Morah Tzivie that we found moss, worms (or as some of the said, "snakes!"), and plants. This was a perfect start since we really focused on the agricultural part of Tu B'shvat. Our activities really lead us to talk about how things grow. We took a few chances to look at our grass heads we made last week to see that a couple of them have started growing! Then we set up our next experiment. We talked about how raisins are dried up grapes. So we took some grapes and put them in cups on the window sill to see if we can make our own raisins. We will see how these turn out as we are watching them each day! We also made flowers out of coffee filters and then planted them and real flower seeds into flower pots that were made last week. In home living, we pretended to plant a garden (in a bucket of sand) and then harvest our bucket and make food out of the vegetables. We then used the idea of these vegetables to lead us to our discussion about soup, where we wrote what we would want to add into our soup in our writing area. And we even made our own Stone Soup after reading the book (please see the conversation below). We also made leaf people, painted with different vegetables and played with popcorn kernels. We had different size measuring devices to work with the idea of volume. And of course, the long awaited worms were on display this week as we watched them hide in the dirt and then occasionally come out to show themselves! Oh!...and we also planted our own little garden in the classroom. Right now our seeds are in egg cartons in the dirt with water. We will have to see if these plants start to grow as we watch them in the classroom!

Conversations from this week:

We read the book "Stone Soup" this week. Right after finishing it, we made stone soup. One of the things I liked about the adapted version of this book was that in the end of this book they actually talk about the "magical ingredient" that they used to make the soup was sharing. Such an important concept for children to understand. And we even discussed how nice it was that we were able to work together to make a wonderful soup for the classroom too!

Morah Amanda: How is this pot and the pot in the book different? So far there is one thing you already mentioned.
Avery: It's little.
Morah Amanda: It's little. Now, do you think I can build a fire under it?
Class: No.
Morah Amanda: No. That would be a little hard, especially since we are inside. So, in here, Mussie and Levi have already shared with us some potatoes, some carrots, some celery and some oil.
Miriam: Matzah balls?
Morah Amanda: No, there are no matzah balls. We are not going to make matzah ball soup. So we already have our magical ingredient, which is "sharing," right?
Class: right.
Morah Amanda: So what we are going to do is I am going to stir the vegetables and let them cook for just a minute or so over the heat.
Miriam: It is the best ever day.
Morah Amanda: And what is this?
Levi: A stone.
Morah Amanda: A stone. Should I put it in the pot?
Class: No.
Morah Amanda: Do you think that in the story they really needed the stone in the pot to make the soup?
Class: No
Morah Amanda: No. Do you know what they did? They said, "We're going to make stone soup. We're going to put a stone into our water to make soup." And then they asked for everyone to bring all the ingredients to make their soup. And we have all our ingredients in here already, right? Do you think we need to put the stone in?
Miriam: No.
Avery: No, it's for pretend.
Levi: Yes pretend.
Mussie: We will pretend!
Morah Amanda: What we are going to do is take turns and go fill up the cup with water and put it in the pot.

I felt I couldn't pass up sharing this conversation as I was laughing at the end of it. This took place during lunch.

Mussie: We have chocolate milk at home.

Miriam: So do I!

Mussie: I think our chocolate milk came from Eretz Yisrael. But I don't know how we get it. We must order it or something.

Miriam: We get our chocolate milk from cows.

A Look At Next Week:

Tzedakah, tzedakah, tzedakah, that is what we give. And next week we will be talking a lot about this. We will be discussing coins and what they are worth. We will be listening to different tzedkah boxes filled with coins to "hear" which one has more. We will be having a tzedakah race and we will be trying to build tzedkah boxes out of our blocks. Of course there are many more activities we will be doing as well. And please don't forget that on a daily basis we collect tzedakah in our class room during our davening time.

Our nature walk

Leaf people

Veggie painting

Our sand garden in home living

Popcorn play

Coffee filter flowers

Making and eating stone soup

Our class garden

What grows from the ground?

A look at this week:

The week started on Tuesday with a question about what Jewish holiday was coming up next. And when we got the answer of Tu B'shvat, I then asked what this holiday was all about and I was informed that it was the birthday of the trees! And this is how our conversation started as we talked about things that grow from the ground. Throughout the week we found out that items, such as the grass heads we made, start as seeds. They are planted in dirt and then need water and light to grow. Hopefully, over the next week or so our grass heads will grow their hair so we can give them a quick haircut and then they can be enjoyed at home!

On Tuesday the children enjoyed making special flower pots where they wrapped yarn onto the pots to help decorate them. Over the next week we will be making some flowers (and maybe planting some) to put into these pots! On Wednesday we introduced the seed activities. The children looked at five different seeds. We talked about their similarities and differences and then put them all together for the children to sort, which is an activity that continued throughout the week. We also had the chance to do a writing exercise about items that grow from the ground. In home living the children pretended to plant a garden and then used their grown vegetables in the kitchen to make food. And in blocks the children tried to build trees and gardens. In art we used tree stamps to make a tree mural for our world wall. Overall, we had a nice introduction to how things grow from the ground.

We also spent some time working on word/picture recognition. The children, as a group, took words and tried to match the words to the pictures. They had a lot of fun working on this.

What the children have been saying:

Once again, it is just so nice to hear when the children ask for others to sit next to them or when someone is hurt the children ask if they are ok. The nice thing is the answer is normally that the person is fine. Although there are times when the children do argue, they are really learning how to get along with each other and be nice to each other!

A look at next week:

We will be continuing to discuss ideas about Tu B'shvat. We will be doing more with dirt, the worms and plants. Next week we will also be reading the book, "Stone Soup." Then we will be writing our own class book about what to put into our pot to make our own stone soup. We also will be attempting to make stone soup as a class!

Decorating the cups to make grass heads

Grass heads are ready to grow

Flower pot decorating

Word work

More word work

Seed sorting

More seed sorting

Getting Ready for Shabbat

A Look at this Week:

We have had a lot of fun getting ready for Shabbat. This week's focus was Shabbat and the items that we use on our Sabbath tables. We did a little writing where we had to fill in the blank to the song, "Put some _____ in the pot. Stir it up, nice and hot...." We made a book about this! We also made our very own song and blessing books and wrote on the inside covers of these as well. For math this week we had to count the seeds on the challot and then match each seeded challah to the challah with the same number on it. For science the children investigated ideas behind volume. They did water play and used different containers to fill and empty. In the home living area the children pretended it was Shabbat. They either got ready for Shabbat dinner or pretended to be enjoying the dinner. In the block area the children became very creative as they tried to build kiddush cups, Shabbat candlesticks and even challah. Everyday this week we had a new art project as well. We started with making Kiddush cups; then we made our song books; the next day we made a candlestick; then we made challah covers and on Friday we decorated the Shabbat boxes to keep our items in!

The kids will all finish their Shabbat boxes at some point next week. YOU ARE ALL (including those who do not regularly attend on Fridays) INVITED to join our class on Friday morning from 10:15-11:15 AM. We will have a "mock Shabbat" and the kids will get to use (and show off) their Shabbat items. Tia (our Kindermusic instructor) will be here as well during that hour.

The conversations that take place in our class:

This week was a very special week for the children of The Gan. We were able to welcome a new friend to the class, Tyrus! It was very nice to hear the children welcome him. Many times I overheard, "Tyrus, come sit next to me." Or other times I head the children say, "Here Tyrus, I will show you!" "Come play with me Tyrus." It was very nice.

And just to show how caring our children really are they were all very concerned about and kept asking where our friend Noah was. They all hope he is feeling much better!

Looking Ahead:

Next week is a short week. We will be closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day. When we come back we are going to get our hands into a lot of planting, seed exploration (and even some soil and worms:). Tu B'shvat (celebrated on the Jewish calendar as "The New Year for Trees" when plants and trees start blooming in Israel, is coming up soon, and our class will be ready and full of tree and plant knowledge. We will be doing a number of activities from seed sorting to stamping with fruit and vegetables!

Song book cover decorating

Challah seed counting

Coloring Challah Covers

Candle stick making

Mussie's Shabbat candles and kiddush cup

Fingerprinting our pretend tablecloth

Ready for Shabbat!

Using playdough to make challot

Making Kiddush cups

As a special addition, I have included a short video from our Music class that we have been having during our Shabbat party.

Winter Break is over and we are back!

A look at this week:

We jumped right into learning when we returned from winter break! This week we started by pretending to get on an airplane and taking a trip to Israel. In home living we dressed up and got ready for our trip. Then once we arrived in Israel we visited many places. First we exchanged our money (by doing coin rubbings for math). Then, with the book about Sammy Spider going to Israel as our guide, we followed his trip and "visited" different places in Israel. Please read our discussion below to see exactly how the activities fit into our trip as we discussed this after having a few days of doing the different activities. In art we sponge painted bricks onto paper in the block area we built the Western Wall. For writing this week we wrote letters to Hashem and then added them to our wall. We also filled in the blank to "I am going on a trip to Israel. And in my suitcase I packed ________." The children rolled a letter die to get a letter and had to come up with an item to pack that started with that letter. In science we did a special experiement with water and salt. And we even had a chance to make and try humus!

Oh...we also took the chance with the new year starting to measure everyone again so we can see how many apples tall and inches tall each child measures at as well as how many apples and inches each child grew so far this school year!

Talking about the week (in review):
Morah Amanda: Let's talk about our wall again. Tell me what Sammy Spider felt when he went to visit the Western Wall.

Lizzy: The paper.

Morah Amanda: He didn't feel the paper. What did he feel first?

Lizzy: The bricks.

Morah Amanda: He felt the bricks first. And the bricks were...?

Lizzy: Hard

Morah Amanda: They were hard and...?

Mussie: Rough!

Morah Amanda: And then he was crawling around inbetween the bricks and he felt what?

Mussie: Paper?

Morah Amanda: Yes, there was paper but he doesn't talk about the paper. He found some?

Lizzy: Leaves!

Morah Amanda: He found some leaves and some?

Mussie: Grass.

Noah: Trees.

Morah Amanda: Not trees, they don't grow out of a wall. How about some weeds? This wall is so old that plants are growing through it? How do these all feel?

Mussie: Soft!

Morah Amanda: Now, in the story Sammy Spider and Josh and his family went to a kibbutz. Does anyone remember what a kibbutz is?

Levi: (looking at page in book) A big giant watermelon!

Morah Amanda: There is a big giant watermelon. Does anyone remember what a kibbutz is? A kibbutz is a place where many families live together and work on the land. And Josh's family decided to eat together. What did Sammy Spider get to taste?

Mussie: pickles.

Morah Amanda: And how did the pickles taste to him?

Class: sour

Morah Amanda: Sour. That is one of our other sense, taste. What else did he have?

Mussie: Challah

Morah Amanda: Not Challah but Halvah. It is a dessert, how do you think it would taste?

Avery: Good!

Mussie: Yummy. Sweet!

Morah Amanda: What else did he have?

Mussie: Olives.

Morah Amanda: He had olives. How did they taste?

Noah: Sour

Morah Amanda: Not sour

Mussie: Sweet.

Morah Amanda: Not sweet

Miriam: Good!

Mussie: Salty!

Morah Amanda: Salty! Good job Mussie. And he ate two other things and talked about how they tasted. He ate falafel and hummus. And how did they taste?

Avery: I don't know how hummus tastes.

Mussie: Spicy.

Morah Amanda: Right Mussie, they tasted spicy. You know what Avery? You are going to be able to taste hummus because we are going to make our very own hummus.

Noah: Hummus?

Morah Amanda: So in just a few more minutes we are going to have Morah Tzivie help us make some hummus. Why do you think we are going to make hummus?

Lizzy: Because we like hummus.

Avery: I don't like hummus.

Morah Amanda: How do you know if you like it if you haven't had it?

Lizzy: We like it because it is yummy, sweet and sour.

Morah Amanda: That is an intersting mixture of tastes.

Mussie: Cause Sammy spider ate it in Israel.

Morah Amanda: Ok. What have we been doing this week?

Mussie: We took a trip to Israel.

Morah Amanda: We took a trip to Israel. And did we visit the Dead Sea?

Class: Yes.

Morah Amanda: And how did we visit the Dead Sea?

Noah: Salt!

Morah Amanda: And what did we do with the salt?

Class: We put it in the water.

Morah Amanda: We put the salt in the water and what did we try to see? If things would what?

Mussie: Float!

Morah Amanda: If things would float on the salty water! And did we visit the Kotel?

Mussie: Yes!

Morah Amanda: How? What did we do?

Class: With paint. And sponges.

Morah Amanda: So we visited the Kotel, by making our own wall. We visited a kibbutz by working together to make hummus and we visisted the Dead Sea by adding salt to water and seeing if we could make items float!

Looking at next week:

Next week we are going to spend the week talking about Shabbat. We will be making special Shabbat items and doing some math sorting! If you have any shoe boxes at home that we could use to put our special art projects in, we would love to decorate them and use them as special Shabbat Boxes. Please send them in Monday if you have any! Thank you!

We always enjoy having family participation in activities. If you would like to take a moment to write something on a piece of paper and add it to our own special wall I am sure the children would love to share this special display with all of you! Please feel free to participate in our new classroom display!

All dressed and ready for our trip!

Making coin rubbings

Building (or painting) our wall

Adding grass and weeds

Writing our own words to Hashem

Adding our letters to the wall

Our wall

The first ingredient in Humus: Garbonzo Beans

Adding the final ingredient before blending it all together